Why Use User Models during Usability Testing?

February 24 10:00 2014 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Nowadays usability testing is a significant part of every testing process. Without it a web site testing, desktop testing or mobile application testing will be incomplete.

It is known that one of the best ways of executing usability testing is involving representatives of potential end users of the application under test. The people are given certain tasks and they must cope with them using the software product. The testers and the developers watch how the people interact with the software and notice what difficulties they face.

Sometimes there is no possibility to involve end users in mobile testing, desktop testing or web site testing because of time and budget constraints. In this case it is wise to gather information about end-users of the application under test and create models of the typical users. Models of extreme users are also very helpful.

But gathering and using personal information is often illegal. That is why a software testing company advises its testers to be careful in course of such researching and create generalized characters for the user models.

Such User Models are Suitable for Many Applications:

An elderly person who is technophobe, such person usually carefully reads all the instructions and interacts with the software slowly and methodically;
A middle age person who has substantial knowledge and experience in using modern technologies, but is always in a hurry;
A teen-ager who is impatient and irritated by anything that is not as he or she anticipates.

Of course the models are usually more detailed, there may be more of them and they may be different depending on the project.